Unpopular Opinions

[djsojus]

List of best Bonds? That would be really difficult. Connery is Bond. But watching those films now is really painful. George Lazenby played Bond in the best movie to date. Daniel Craig is just brilliant as Bond (closest to the original Bond in the books). Loved how Pierce Brosnan acted, Timothy Dalton just hat bad luck with not that memorable movies.

[Screaming_Meat]

@MrOchoa

Pierce Brosnan is the best James Bond.

you came to the right thread then.

[Zevoros]

@djsojus

Timothy Dalton just hat bad luck with not that memorable movies.

I loved License to Kill

[Screaming_Meat]

“don’t worry. we gave her a nice honeymooooooooooooooooooon.”

Benicio Del Toro's greatest line ever

[Happy_Squirrel]

I’ve done my own ranking. But, first, a couple of housekeeping issues…

You’ve included Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does It Better’ twice in 4th place and 10th place.

Your list is missing ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ by John Barry (‘We Have All The Time In The World’ was not the official title theme) and ‘A View to a Kill’ by Duran Duran.

I haven’t included Herb Alpert’s ‘Casino Royale’ or Lani Hall’s ‘Never Say Never Again’ in my list because neither of those were official EON Bond films.

With that out of the way, here’s my ranking:

1. John Barry & Orchestra, Monty Norman - ‘James Bond Theme’
2. Shirley Bassey - ‘Goldfinger’
3. Paul McCartney & Wings - ‘Live and Let Die’
4. Shirley Bassey - ‘Diamonds Are Forever’
5. Nancy Sinatra - ‘You Only Live Twice’
6. Carly Simon - ‘Nobody Does It Better’
7. John Barry, Michael McDonald - ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’
8. A-ha - ‘The Living Daylights’
9. Tina Turner - ‘GoldenEye’
10. Tom Jones - ‘Thunderball’
11. Sam Smith - ‘Writing’s on the Wall’
12. Chris Cornell - ‘You Know My Name’
13. Billie Eilish - ‘No Time to Die’
14. Sheena Easton - ‘For Your Eyes Only’
15. Duran Duran - ‘A View to a Kill’
16. Adele - ‘Skyfall’
17. Garbage - ‘The World Is Not Enough’
18. Rita Coolidge - ‘All Time High’
19. Sheryl Crow - ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’
20. Matt Monro - ‘From Russia With Love’
21. Gladys Knight - ‘License to Kill’
22. Shirley Bassey - ‘Moonraker’
23. Jack White & Alicia Keyes - ‘Another Way to Die’
24. Lulu - ‘The Man With the Golden Gun’
25. Madonna - ‘Die Another Day’

[djsojus]

Oh my, how could I missed that? I would probably rank Duran Duran just before Madonna. Wasn’t really good. “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” is of course really high on the list.

[MrOchoa]

The only cinematic Universe worth watching is Tohos Kaiju-verse.

[Freezer]

You say that but the Spy Kids and Machete shared universe is better.

[Heisenberg]

I disagree. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is fun, funny, and has a heart to it. Could it be better? Yes; for the sake of retaining audiences, a lot of what made the characters great in the comics had to be sacrificed in the earlier films. Scorsese knows his movies and his human drama, and nothing the MCU could ever produce could match his skill, certainly, but he’s wrong about its worth as entertainment. Whether it’s corporate or not is irrelevant; it works, that’s what matters.

The Monsterverse is fun and has heart as well, but it could have been so much more if they hadn’t gone the route I’d over mythologizing the lore, making ancient civilizations and Hollow Earth these super sci-fi things rather than simply having all the monsters be in hibernation in hidden parts of the earth. It took away from the majesty of the concept from the first Godzilla and Kong movies in the series; that these were ancient beasts that simply had not been discovered yet by humans because of isolation. The idea of ancient cultures interacting with them took away from that and the last two movies, which should have been the best ones, suffered for it, story-wise.

[Happy_Squirrel]

@Heisenberg

Scorsese knows his movies and his human drama, and nothing the MCU could ever produce could match his skill, certainly, but he’s wrong about its worth as entertainment. Whether it’s corporate or not is irrelevant; it works, that’s what matters.

Scorsese later wrote a piece to expand on his comments about Marvel. Worth a read.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/martin-scorsese-marvel.html

[Hichkas]

@zeroyear

rap in particular has been pretty bad for a very long time.

Khalafkaraye Asli

To Koja Boodi?

Hichkas - Tof

Hichkas - Ekhtelaf

Hichkas - Ye Mosht Sarbaz

[Screaming_Meat]

@zeroyear

I don’t think that this is that controversial, but rap in particular has been pretty bad for a very long time. Nas proclaimed in 2007 that Hip Hop is Dead, and I think that he was right. There’s no interesting flow or production anywhere to be seen, and when interesting lyrics are present they are usually not accompanied by the fore-mentioned. I’m sure there are good artists that are still out there, but besides J Cole I’m not hearing them.

clipping. - Story 2 [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

Death Grips - Get Got

both post-naz, i believe. it’s out there, it just isn’t mainstream.

[Screaming_Meat]

@zeroyear

it’s not exactly the mainstream

who cares if it’s mainstream or not? all the interesting music happens at the fringes and always has… then the mainstream artists rip it off

mainstream just means they have a healthy marketing budget.

[Urben]

Mainstream music lacking in depth is more a statement about the society than the genre. That does not mean you have to align.

[Screaming_Meat]

@zeroyear

Yeah but the mainstream used to have stuff like Wu Tang and Big L. People have just taken to eating up nonsense, and they abandon old tactics that worked beautifully for a regressed “evolution”.

whether it is mainstream or not is irrelevant and doesn’t speak about the quality of anything; it’s merely an indicator of market forces.

interesting music can only truly happen at the fringes, where money doesn’t dictate what artists should do. when your income is tied to your art, you have to please your audience and recoup your costs, which directly affects the work. that’s one of the reasons why so many first albums are amazing, while follow ups tend to be trash.

you just have to look harder for the good stuff. it’s out there. tell me the flow and lyrical content of clipping ain’t fucking amazing.

@Quinn

The “Marvel Cinematic Universe” is bland, uninspiring and soulless and Scorsese was right. A corporate flowchart with different reskins.

i’ll go you two further:

1. the popularity of superhero films is symptomatic of the arrested development of adults and a social subconscious desire to shy away from complex real world issues. i.e. alan moore is never wrong.

2. they’re obviously focus-tested neo-liberal corporate propaganda, and are only an achievement in terms of brand management.

(i still watch em. i was a total comic book nerd… what else am i gonna do? )

whilst i’m on a roll:

the popularity of post-apocalyptic movies is a manifestation of a societal death-wish; a desire for an impossible worldwide tabula rasa.

we have no visions of the future to call our own, so we either plunder the past for them (cyberpunk, synthwave, 2001 space odyssey rehashes, etc.) or can only imagine the end of the world in its place, which is far easier to imagine than the end of capitalism… which is depressing.

phew

[MrOchoa]

I personally hate it when bands…“evolve”. I don’t mean getting technically better or something. There was this Punk/Skinhead Band called “4 Promille” they made awesome Music and texts, but over the years the band members “grew out” of the subculture and during their last tour they didn’t played any songs who involved the word “Skinhead” for whatever reason.

A couple of years later they announced that they were back and played some shows and and released a new album and it was terrible, nothing saying pop music.

I don’t understand why they kept their band name and played on the same subculture festivals if they dont want to do their old stuff.

Imo they should have taken a new band name and just said “we’ve used to be 4 Promille and if you liked our old stuff and want to support us, check out our new band”.

But this was just sad.

[Screaming_Meat]

not gonna lie, but i’m not surprised.

[Screaming_Meat]

“but quinn, it’s just a bit of fun, innit? just a little joke, m8! hahaha”

that - as they say - fucking sucks.

[Happy_Squirrel]

With the release of No Time To Die, I’ve been looking back at the Craig era of Bond films and the one which really jumps out as needing reapprasal is Quantum of Solace. It’s widely regarded as the worst Craig film. Some even consider it one of the worst Bond films of all time.

Quantum has its issues. I don’t feel the need to go into them all here because they are omnipresent whenever the film is being discussed. One key criticism I will mention is that Quantum doesn’t work well as a stand-alone Bond film. It’s a fair point - it should really be considered a direct sequel to Casino Royale.

I was sparked to write this after reading these thoughts by @Screaming_Meat…

@Screaming_Meat

1. the popularity of superhero films is symptomatic of the arrested development of adults and a social subconscious desire to shy away from complex real world issues. i.e. alan moore is never wrong.
2. they’re obviously focus-tested neo-liberal corporate propaganda, and are only an achievement in terms of brand management.

A frequent complaint about Quantum of Solace is that it has a mediocre villain and boring plot. However, I have always felt, ever since watching this film in the cinema, that it has one of the most intriguing and nuanced worldviews of any Bond film.

• The antagonist, Dominic Greene is a billionaire who poses as an environmentalist whilst secretly plotting to dominate Bolivia by gaining monopoly control of their water supply.
• The US government and CIA are seen to be facilitating Green’s plans in Bolivia, and thereby enabling a coup to take place which would re-instate a military dictatorship.
• Quantum, the secret organisation to which Greene belongs, is a network of the world’s rich and powerful, with influence at the top of multinational corporations and governments.
• Bond is forced to ‘go rogue’ because the revenge he seeks against Quantum puts him at odds with the interests of the US and British governments. A senior advisor to the British PM is a Quantum member.

In many ways, the Quantum organisation is very similar to Providence in HITMAN. There is an undertone of anti-capitalist critique in both cases, in which billionaires further their own interests regardless of suffering they cause to ordinary people. The next three Bond films shift away from this worldview.

So, in conclusion, I believe much of the criticism of Quantum’s “boring” plot can be regarded as a consequence of what @Screaming_Meat describes as the “subconcious desire to shy away from complex real world issues”. I also consider Quantum of Solace to be the closest the Bond series has come to challenging the standard neo-liberal worldview most films present.

[Screaming_Meat]

I now want to watch it.